Been There, Done That

EX-ADDICT BRINGS UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE TO OTHERS IN RECOVERY

Bruce Burch had dreamed of being in the newspaper one day. Well, actually,
it was more of a nightmare.

"I knew if I kept going the way I was going, I would be on the back page in
a little blurb about some guy found dead in an abandoned house somewhere,"
Burch says. "And that scared me tremendously."

He was only 25, but he had been abusing drugs and alcohol since he was 11 -
more than half his life. Booze, pot, cocaine, speed, LSD - everything
except heroin, he says.

He was thin, malnourished and exhausted. A man will get that way if he
keeps running from himself.

The day Burch hit bottom, he was loaded with cocaine, the result of a binge
that had begun right after he cashed his paycheck and didn't end until at
least 15 hours later.

When he finally ended the binge, strung out on cocaine, guilt and shame,
Burch confided in a close friend who had tried many times to help him break
his addiction. This time, though, his friend looked him in the eye and
said, "You know, man, I don't know what to do with you anymore. You just
can't stop."

Stung by the rejection, Burch threw his few belongings in a bag and began
walking from his downtown boarding house toward the men's shelter at Open
Door Ministries. As he walked, tears - real tears, not the ones he had
sometimes forced for sympathy - streamed down his face.

It was a defining moment in Burch's life.

"Something occurred in that moment - a conversion, a spiritual awakening,
something - and I knew it was it was over," he recalls. "I'd had enough
pain. Enough of the lifestyle. Enough of the insanity of addiction."

At the shelter, Burch sought out shelter director Steve Key - whom he knew
well from previous stays there - and begged to come back. Key obliged, and
Burch expressed his gratitude for one more chance. He stayed a week, vowing
as he left that he would not return.

Little did the two men realize just how wrong Burch was.

Yes, Burch made good on his pledge to turn his life around.

He kicked his addiction - he's been clean since Nov. 3, 1995 - and held
down a job as an electrician's helper. Then he earned his electrical
contractor's license and started his own business.

He also remarried - his first wife having divorced him during his addiction
- - bought a house in Greensboro and had a daughter. He also has a
stepdaughter, as well as a son from his first marriage, whom he sees every
other weekend.

He lives, by his own admission, a very normal life now.

But Burch, now 32, did return to the shelter - as a volunteer, doing
electrical work when needed and occasionally talking to other men about
recovery.

Then, a job opened up - director of the shelter's transitional housing
program - and Burch applied. His electrical company was doing OK, he says,
but it wasn't fulfilling.

"When the job became available, it was one of those things where I wondered
if it was God answering a prayer," he says. "My ties to Open Door
Ministries were already very strong. The more I thought about it, the more
it felt like I was being led to do this."

In mid-August, Burch got the job, bringing his life full circle: Once a
drug addict, now he gets high on helping other addicts.

"I can look at these guys and tell them they're addicts, and they look at
me like, 'How did you know?'" Burch says. "I tell 'em, 'Because I've been
there.'"

Indeed, the rocky road Burch traveled gives him a unique perspective that
most professionals in his type of job do not have.

"This kind of work is not an exact science," says Key, now the executive
director of Open Door Ministries. "There are not a lot of courses you're
going to take in school that will teach you how to handle some of these
situations. I think it really helps the guys to know that Bruce has been
there and has experienced what they're going through."

That's true, says 61-year-old Ernest Hammond, a resident at the shelter's
transitional house. "If he had never been through what I've been going
through, I wouldn't have much confidence in what he's got to say."

The first - and often most difficult - step, Burch tells addicts, is
admitting the addiction.

That's tougher than it sounds, Burch says, explaining that he was blown
away when a counselor told him he was an addict.

"What I did know was that I couldn't stop," he says, "but I had never
really thought of myself as an addict because I wasn't a 30- or 40-year-old
junkie on the street corner with a needle hanging out of my arm."

Men must be free of alcohol and/or drugs for at least 30 days before being
allowed to move in at the Arthur Cassell Memorial Transitional House on
True Lane, and the home is a halfway house, of sorts.

"The program is designed to move guys from ground zero of homelessness and
addiction to drugs and alcoholism into recovery, and then eventually into
their own self-sufficient living situation," Burch says. "It's sort of a
gradual re-introduction back into society."

The men must work a full-time job, pay 30 percent of their take-home income
for rent and fulfill various other requirements, including attending
regular Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

Burch says he enjoys the challenge of helping men move from where he once
was - addiction - to where he is now - recovery.

"The satisfaction I get far outweighs the monetary rewards of this job," he
says. "Don't get me wrong - it's great that I can make money doing this,
but I'm a much more fulfilled person than I was doing electrical work,
because I know that my contribution to these guys may one day be the
deciding factor in whether or not they get high."

Burch also says he owes the people of High Point a debt of gratitude for
supporting Open Door Ministries and helping the transitional housing
program become a reality.

"I'm one of those people who believe that if we save only one life, it's
well worth the effort," he says. "If I can get one guy to stay clean for a
whole year, then I believe I've been a success."

It's a remarkable story, really: Bruce Burch spent much of his life giving
in - to temptation and to his addiction.

Then, finally, he gave up.

And now, he's giving back.

Staff writer Jimmy Tomlin can be contacted at 888-3579 or jtomlin@hpe.com.